


American Cruelty

by mysterytheseahorse



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blood, Bruises, Disturbing, Evil, Guns, Homicide, Horror, Knives, M/M, Mass Murderers, Mass shooting, Motel, Murder, Psychological Horror, Salem, Serial Killers, Thriller, Travel, Violence, dont read this, killers, messed up relationship, the title is from wishing lmao, very very VERY loosely ahs cult inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 02:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12355893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytheseahorse/pseuds/mysterytheseahorse
Summary: Though Tyler has always preferred bullets, the sensation of a knife in my palm suited me more. Even while I’m hurling myself into the passenger seat, it’s as much a part of me as my eyeballs: linked to my every action and acting unconscious and instinctive, like my neurons forwarded themselves into the metal.





	American Cruelty

**Author's Note:**

> this is the worst™ but i couldn’t not upload something on friday the thirteenth so here u go weee

The heaviest part of my body is my feet as I run to the van. Tyler hollered and pranced, even daring to click his heels in the air, a handful of feet in front of me. The handgun held lovingly in his scuffed fingers, winked in the green streetlamp. Though Tyler has always preferred bullets, the sensation of a knife in my palm suited me more. Even while I’m hurling myself into the passenger seat, it’s as much a part of me as my eyeballs: linked to my every action and acting unconscious and instinctive, like my neurons forwarded themselves into the metal.

Tyler squeezed my hand and pressed the gas petal into the floor. Swerving dangerously from one side of the road to the other, he lazily leaned over the center console to press a wet kiss to the side of my mouth. I licked at a crumb of dried blood on his chin, and out of the corner of his eye, he maneuvered the vehicle to stop short the path of one of our unfinished victims crawling across the asphalt.

Judging by the trail of blood streaked on the ground by her broken leg, she’d made it out of the house and was struggling to make her way to safety. Undeniably, I thought, she was an artist: in the dim light I could still easily see the blotches of bright paint staining her hands and nightclothes. Her hair was uniquely shaven on the left side, and the tips faded into a muddy orange. The way she moved, especially in this desperate and hopeless place, was deliberate and poignant. I giggled at the hearty, musical thump of the van crossing her body, knowing that even after her death this girl’s blood would still be painting the street.

Tyler was too damned smart to take any main roads to get back on the interstate out of Andover, Massachusetts. He hadn’t specifically heard any neighbors or the family we’d just finished playing around with call the cops, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t. This added another hour or so to our expedition to Salem in New Hampshire but I didn’t mind at all. As soon as we found a cheap motel I knew Tyler would drag me into the room assigned to us and kiss me against the wall just as hard as I’d dug my fingernails into a young man’s eye sockets just a few hours previously. I took this available time to scrub suspicious patches of grime off my face and forearms. Tyler blasted American Pie through the van's busted speakers.

Tyler, though willing to commit manslaughter in any city either himself or I decide upon, he obsessively requests to stay in only towns named Salem. He says they feel eerie, but in a way that makes him feel blanketed and comfortable. I assume it’s linked to the Salem witch trials, the condemnation of evil, but to be fair that’s the only Salem-situation I’m familiar with. Even if it hadn’t been explained to me, the resonance that relaxes his facial structure each time we speed past a “Welcome to Salem!” road sign makes me grateful for whatever it is that brings the euphoria. I kissed his knuckles when the familiar text elicited a grin to break his stoic expression yet again.

Of course, when we found a Motel 8 on the side of the road, Tyler swung our only two bags into his bony shoulders and requested a room. He declined the offer for two beds, and immediately after turning the corner heaved me into his arms like we were a pair of newlyweds. I kicked my legs up and down and left watercolor bruises on his neck while he unlocked our door.

Tyler’s hands looked small when wrapped around a baseball bat or when cradling a pistol, but when they flattened my body against the mustard wallpaper in that motel which smelled of decay and age, those were the hands of God. Controlling but never demanding, He lifted my legs around His hips and pushed His tongue into my mouth like an inquisitive serpent. He praised my work in the job earlier that day, told me I’d never been so quick and productive and creative. I kissed Him back, the old remnants of His light nosebleed a metallic sweetness on my tongue. I whispered love into His teeth, but instead of affection it felt closer to reverence.

 

The bright morning woke me through the motel’s cheap curtains. Tyler was already in the shower, even though he’d already taken one the previous night after sex. He savored the nostalgic simplicity of homely tasks. With our preferred hobby, a proper house isn’t a possibility, but we both are grateful for the things that feel like one.

I stole a casual glance at a tanned, bruised, and cut Tyler standing under the weak dribble of lukewarm water. He looks entirely ethereal, with his overgrown buzzcut sticking in fat tendrils to his neck, convex ribs jutting over his empty belly and dripping water over his legs, and every line in his body free of dirt and crusted blood, as it very rarely was. The cream tiles reflected a diluted version of his form back to himself. He briefly turned, completely disregarding the water in his eyes, and cracked a nonchalant smile. “Good morning, love.”

The van coughed and sputtered, and Tyler reprimanded it by beating his fist on the wheel. We’d decided upon Herrin, Illinois, which was a third of the country away, so we set apart two or three days for driving. It was seldom we killed two days in a row anyways. Tyler always insisted on driving and allowing me to acquire as much “beauty sleep” as I needed.

Later in the week, at 8:19 pm on a Tuesday we entered the comfortably sized town. I’d informed Tyler groggily that I wanted a robbery earlier in the day. I was craving the thrill of thievery in my veins. Later, I decided on a quaint, family-owned jewelry shop.

We parked the van outside Henderson Jeweler’s with the ski masks I’d tailored individually for each of us already pulled over our faces. Tyler held the gun as gingerly as he holds me in his lap, watching me as I wiped three separate blades on my shirttail. I held the first tightly in my grip and put the other two in each of my jacket pockets. I told Tyler I loved him; he repeated it back to me.

I don’t know if a group of only two people can be properly described as an ambush, but I believe as we crashed through the automated doors Tyler and I were an army. He fired a wispy shot at a trembling woman too frightened and perplexed to decided whether she wanted to dive behind the counter or duck to the side of an opal ring display. The splatter of thick blood out of her neck made an edgy addition to the cherry blossom painting adorning the wall she was killed in front of.

She was alone, but I couldn’t tell whether or not she was lonely. Her sweater was littered with short cat hairs and a particularly noticeable whisker on her breast. There was no wedding ring on her left hand, but instead, a heart-shaped lapel pin which read “May God Protect Me Always.” When she fell, her calendar booklet tumbled out of her purse, but no dates seemed to be marked on the pages. I noted a speckle of her on the wall in the shape of a lopsided heart.

An oily-faced man wider than he was tall stood with white knuckles at the cash register. Before he could make a conscious decision to protect himself, I had whipped out the larger of my backup knives and driven the blade through the back of his hand and into the table below it. I hopped lightly over the desk, a smile cracking over my face. Leisurely, I took wads of bills and handfuls of coins and placed them into the backpack hanging limply from my wrist.

Tyler shot anything that moved: the necklace turntable still wobbling because he had bumped it when we first arrived, the young man likely looking for an engagement ring who thought he was being wise by making an attempt to sprint out of the door, the paper bag that had drifted from behind the counter and was twirling in the wind, just as involved in the chaos and every one was.

I nodded at him, making eye contact from behind thick white wool, and pointing the gun promisingly at each pedestrian and we walked backwards, hand in hand, out of the shop. Right before our feet had left the littered blue carpet, I kissed him in the crime scene, and then we sped away to Salem.


End file.
